whats wrong with this picture?

[mclawsdrive]

http://gis.roanokegov.com/img_photos/201/2013901-2.jpeg

I can't believe that the city used 'blight' removal' as justification for tearing down a several square blocks of neighborhood to install this monstrosity. I know the city needed tax revenue at the time, but don't you think this large space between the 2nd and 5th street bridges would be ideal for some sort of human scale use (instead of a huge asphalt parking lots with some crappy sheet metal warehouses and a bunch of tractor trailors.) I think a 4 year institution of higher learning would be ideal...expand west from the the higher ed center and culinary school, but its hard to think of many uses that would be worse for the space than what it is now.

Anyone have any ideas for Coca Cola's property, if the city used reverse urban renewal or incentives to relocate them?

[weill]

Coke should relocate to the county, but the factory, i beileive, has been there awhile.

[bmedguy]

Yeah, it went from "blighted" to "even more blighted" in my opinion as well. By all means we should keep Coke here, but moving it to one of the industrial parks on the periphery of the city or in the county where other similar development exists would be much better.

A four year University in Roanoke would change the character of this town greatly and increase the confidence of outsiders to invest business here due to the ability to find a sufficiently educated work force to draw from. Tech is just bit too far away I think for outsiders to really tie it to Roanoke. I think the Higher Education Cenetr has been deemed a successful experiment. I haven't heard of any plans that they will expand but would love it if they did. The area you pictured would indeed be ideal. However, I think our best shot at getting a four year institution of significance is Jefferson College of Health Sciences. In the last two years they have expanded their programs. They introduced their first Masters Degree program (heatlhcare administration I think) and have expanded the numebr of Bachelors degree programs. Enrollment is up significantly, though stilll only at 900 students. The physical facilities are in place for further expansion. The have the existing building of course but are now in the process of expanding and becoming the primary tenant of what will be the former Community Hospital. That hospital is being merged into the new Carilion Medical Center. There are a couple of large and relatively new office buldings that house physicians offices currently that form something of a Community Hospital campus. When the hospital moves, it will only be a matter of time before these practices will also move to be close to the new medical center. These buildings would be ripe for the continued expansion of the college and thus create an actual downtown campus of several buildings. JCHS has seen this expansion occur since (surprise surprise) Carilion took part ownership of the school. Everything that actually gets somewhere developmentally seems to have Big Brother (Carilion) behind it in this city. I am glad they do what they do, but at the same time wish there was another entity of equal affluence and power around here that also took a progressive stance toward development.

[mclawsdrive]

Wow. You're right. I forgot that College of Health Sciences will be taking over community hospital. Ideally what I want to see is as much on campus housing as possible. The more young people that live downtown during college, more young people will stay there after college where there job connections and social network are.

In Fredericksburg there are so many more 20 somethings as a percentage than Roanoke, and I contribute most of that to the University of Mary Washington. Students get part time jobs and go to local restaurants and bars, moving off campus for their last year or 2. Its hard to leave a place where all your friends are, even when the pay-scale sucks (as it does in Fredericksburg). The effect snowballs because many local Frederickburg young adults stay in town as well because of the critical mass of young people already there.

As far as another potential college programs, maybe a university could open a satelite campus in Roanoke. Perhaps a school of the arts, tying into the art museum, or an urban revitalization program. It would be really awesome to have a music school like Berklee in Boston, so that Roanoke would always have awesome live music every night. I'll let you know when Berklee's Board of Visitors calls me to inquire about establishing a 2nd campus.

[urbanvb]

The article and pics are not working.

[lammius]

Yeah it appears the entire Roanoke GIS website is down

[mclawsdrive]

I think the site was down for Database Maintanance. Its supposed to only be unavailable from 1:00 am to 3:00 am, but you never know, they may have started early since it was a Sunday night. Anyway, the site is back up, check out those pics. Also I've got another idea for that site I'll try to add here later.

[mclawsdrive]

My idea is to extend wells avenue to 5th street to provide better accessibility to the western part of downtown.

http://www.picfury.com/1/wells2-1-th.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />

With all the new activity along 5th street....new YMCA, Jefferson center, cotton mill building, parking garage (to be built at site of old YMCA), and the space for lots of potential future growth, I think it is important to make this area more accessable from 581.

[StevenRocks]

Sounds doable to me.

[mclawsdrive]

Thanks, Steven. I'll just tell Darlene to go ahead with construction.